An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Cooperative Learning On Students' English Vocabulary Learning In Primary School

Vocabulary plays an important role in primary school students' English learning.At present,many primary English teachers in our country still use the traditional method to teach vocabulary.As a result,a lot of students gradually lose interest in learning English and learning English words.It is a very difficult problem.Some English teachers in the front line are constantly exploring new vocabulary teaching methods to promote primary English vocabulary teaching.Among them,cooperative learning is a relatively popular teaching method.The cooperative learning activities emphasize the cooperative interaction among students.It can not only make the learning atmosphere relaxing and enjoyable but also make students learn actively and get progress.Even more,it is effective in changing students' learning attitude.At the same time,this efficient cooperative learning theory is widely applied in many kinds of class teaching.The researcher also tries to apply this theory to her vocabulary teaching class and hopes to achieve good results.The research questions in this paper are as follows: 1.Can cooperative learning improve the vocabulary learning score of primary students? 2.Can cooperative learning positively influence primary school students' attitude in learning English vocabulary?In order to answer the above two questions,the researcher chose 80 students of the two natural classes in the fifth grade of elementary school as the experimental subjects and spent 14 weeks doing the experiment.Class 3 was the experimental class,in which the cooperative learning method on vocabulary learning was applied.While class 4 was control class in which used traditional teaching methods was used for vocabulary teaching.Before the experiment,the vocabulary test was conducted in the two classes,and the differences of English vocabulary scores of the two classes were observed.It means that two classes are equivalent in vocabulary level before the experiment and the research is reliable.A questionnaire survey was done in the experimental class to understand the students' thoughts on English vocabulary learning,the learning situation in and out-of the class.After the 14-week experiment,the vocabulary test was taken by the students in the two classes to get the changes in the vocabulary learning score after the experiment.Then,students in the experimental class would finish questionnaires and interviews to see whether the students' learning attitudes,learning situation in and out-of the class of English vocabulary changed or not.Analysis is made by using SPSS after data collection.Through the tests results of data analysis,it can be seen that students in EC have a better score than those in CC.Cooperative learning can improve the vocabulary learning score of primary students.Then,from the result of interview and questionnaires,it can be summarized primary school students' attitude in learning English vocabulary can be positively influenced by the cooperative learning.